Fear and Loathing on Capitol Hill

A friend on Capitol Hill in a very dark mood thinks so. Last time, House Republicans got blamed for shutting down the government, this time they'll get blamed for shutting down the financial system. He also worries—did I mention he's in a dark mood?—that if nothing passes and the crash comes, the country may arrive at a turning point, moving irrevocably in the direction of a social democracy.

Hey, you know what this country needs? Since we can't depend on discredited capitalism any longer, maybe we need that guaranteed minimum income from the federal government -- a weekly stipend paid to all Americans to do nothing at all, except exist Iand not even that, if you can fool the system by creating alternate identities, and we all know how hard that is) -- that Nixon came within inches of proposing.

That way we'll all have a government-guaranteed safety net. And in trying times like these, isn't that the sort of thing we all need?